NASHI Youth Movement in Russia

re:

I watched a PBS show on this group and they are scary. They seem to be connected to the Putin regime and exhibit Hitler Youth behavior. They even do things to intimidate critics by defecating on their cars-there are videos showing this. But because of their government connections, they never get charged.They believe themselves to be an elite in full support of Putin. Keep an eye on these guys.

Comments

re: NASHI Youth Movement in Russia

by Karolina

Jul. 2, 2012 12:57 pm

I didn't find anything on the link that you gave. I have never heard of this group and I know that the word "nashi" means "our own (people)" in most Slavik languages, so it sounds kind of "We The People." Are you sure that you're not over-reacting?

re: NASHI Youth Movement in Russia

"Can you talk about the significance of Nashi, the mass youth movement supporting Putin? How did it get started?

Nashi’s origins are mysterious, but it’s believed that the Kremlin was afraid of another Orange-style revolution like in Ukraine, where thousands of people protested against rigged elections and demanded and got a revote. Nashi’s founder Vasily Yakemenko says that Nashi is a democratic anti-fascist movement that is devoted to helping the next generation by giving them educational opportunities and job skills. But for Nashi, a fascist seems to be anyone who doesn’t agree with Putin, including Kasparov and Yavlinsky. The group is also quite militant. It harasses the Kremlin’s political opponents and even pursued the British Ambassador in Moscow for months after he attended a conference of Kasparov’s political coalition."

re: NASHI Youth Movement in Russia

by Karolina

Jul. 3, 2012 3:46 pm

I have been trying to get through the pbs film about Nashi but it is very "stop and go" and though I am half-way through, it will be another 2 hours before either my computer or their website reaches the end. It seems to me to be full of propaganda to frighten and move people in the West against Russia again. This makes me wonder if an unnecessary war against Russia is not still in the plans of Western world leaders, namely London and the US. Russia continues to refuse to succumb to their financial and political demands.

In the 1970's I visited Russia and Ukraine. I was a teen-ager, and found it very shocking that many of the people that I met there, spoke adamantly and often against fascism. Another idea that I heard for the first time there was that they did not have any love for Britain, since they blamed London for both world wars and for the austere lives they led under their non-communist "Communist government". The totalitarian regime that they had always had, really just changed in title from "Czarist Russia" to "Communist Russia"— and nothing else was different. It doesn't surprise me that they still distrust the British, and in particular that they believed the British prime minister, who sided with the coalition which was not the choice of the over-whelming majority, was meddling in their national politics.

Nothing in their conferences seems any more militant than the conferences in any corporate conferences or Democratic Party conferences that I have seen. Like the narrater-journalist, the "underground" side of the Nashi movement seemed beefed-up and dark, to look verrrrrrry intimidating. I like the long-distance camera-shot at night, of some people not clearly visible beating up a few other people not clearly visible. That was a nice touch.

One of the really weird ironies of politics these days is the huge divergence between what the American people actually want and what the radical right-wingers in Washington actually do. You won’t hear this on Fox So-Called News, but right now the American people are as progressive as they ever have been.